“Okay kids, repress your true feelings to experience this rare moment of familial joy.”

Flocking dork and deceitful bitch road trip.

Jesse Eisenberg has two speeds: superdork nebbish and fast-taking schemer. In RIO 2, he’s phoning it in as the former.

Eisenberg returns as rare macaw parrot Blu, who is now married to his parrot love interest from RIO, Jewel (voice of Anne Hathaway), so there is a noticeable lack of the romantic frisson that drove the last movie; rather, the defining emotion here is jealousy and deceit, as Blu meets Jewel’s old boyfriends from the old ‘hood, and Jewel deceives Blu into her-way-or-the-highway. Also, he and Jewel are parents to three annoying young birds, such clichéd devices they might as well be humans in a White American Sitcom (i.e. the most homogenized banal pablum on Earth). Blu’s constant advice to his rare family is not to adventure too far from the nest, “Birds of blue feathers – flock together!” Makes no difference to the misbehaving kids, a grating element painted as “cute” and “independent” rather than the impertinent snots they would truly be in real life.

RIO 2 is not off to a good start. And it only gets more polly-want-a-cracker…

The theme of this sequel is still about finding oneself, but the dynamics have changed dramatically, not for the better: whereas once a prospective sexy mate led Blu to discovering his powers; now Blu is henpecked into accepting one culture over another, the henpecking euphemized as “Happy wife, happy life.”

All the cast return to play their dutiful roles (Jamie Foxx, George Lopez and Will.i.am as three comedy relief bird sidekicks, Leslie Mann and Rodrigo Santoro as Linda and Tulio, the two human biologists who own Blu and Jewel), all seemingly unaware of the contradictory messages RIO 2 is sending.

Blu and Jewel decide to fly from their home in Rio de Janeiro to the Amazon rainforest, to help their owners locate a rare flock of blue macaws like themselves, whereupon they discover Jewel’s old flock, including her tough old dad Eduardo (Andy Garcia, replete with flat top and militant attitude), and Jewel’s previous suitors (including a parrot with Bruno Mars‘ voice), which makes Blu even more stuttery and irritating.

Their plan was to locate the flock, then return home, but unbeknownst to Blu, the discovery of Jewel’s father prompts her to change her mind about leaving. Double standards kick in as Blu is made to look like he is wrong for wanting to leave this paradise – when that was the plan all along. And Jewel is made to look like a tragic lost child returning home. Jewel deceives Blu into thinking she will eventually fly home with him, when she has every intention to stay in the Amazon, and is hoping her father will indoctrinate Blu to the jungle before he realizes it. Jewel is more of a villain than the actual comic relief villain of this movie! But that angle is never even hinted at. Because apparently – in any species – you’re blameless if you’re hot.

The animation (by Blue Sky Studios) is remarkable, and the story is kinetic enough to keep it mildly interesting: Nigel the Shakespearean cockatoo (Jemaine Clement) is the wannabe thespian from the last movie that Blu injured, seeking revenge for his flightlessness. (He performs an eclectic version of I Will Survive that draws on so many cultural refs your head will spin.) And an illegal group of loggers is clearing the rainforest, which the biologists battle. And a flock of red macaws is moving in on Eduardo’s territory. So a lot is happening. But I just don’t care. Maybe it’s my aversion to small birds – chickens and ducks and parrots – and their icky ass feathers.

RIO 2’s frenetic story concludes with another big carnival dance number, that forces a happy ending on us, pretending that Jewel’s deceit didn’t exist, and that Brazilian carnivals solve everything, as blue and red macaws become friends because the script says so, as loggers stop logging and, we presume, the contracts authorizing that logging were all ripped up by avaricious politicians turned environmentalists.

And we have achieved White American Sitcom.

END

Rio de Generic.

Named RIO, one would expect a flashy, exuberant, carnivale dance-a-vale rainbow spectacle. One would be wrong. Rather, an uninvolving tale of a rare blue macaw and his intended mate on the run from poachers, while his owner and her soon-to-be mate try to track them down. Cue seen-it-a-million-times face.

Jesse Eisenberg voices Blu the parrot, abandoned at birth, raised in a Minnesota bookstore by over-protective Linda (Leslie Mann), so never had the need to fly (a plot point more annoying than adorable). Linda is asked to bring Blu to Rio de Janeiro to mate with a rare female of the species, but she’s an untamed forest macaw named Jewel (voice of Anne Hathaway) who despises the domesticated ineptitude of Blu. Both macaws are subsequently stolen. So begins a fish-out-of-water meets rugged hottie road tale, as Blu and Jewel attempt to escape the poachers the hard way – without flying, due to being shackled together. “Animated kid’s movie” flow chart informs us that rugged hottie will inexplicably fall for the inept male even after he proves himself an embarrassing and inefficient mate. Happens.

Meanwhile, a cavalcade of ancillary characters try to provide the much-needed comedy that Blu is not providing by being so annoying, and that Jewel is not providing by being so annoyed with Blu. Jamie Foxx and Will i am are two little sidekick birds, Jemaine Clement is the poachers’ mercenary cockatoo, George Lopez is a friendly frenetic toucan, and Tracy Morgan is a bulldog who won’t stop grossly drooling. Rodrigo Santoro is Jewel’s owner Tulio, the human male set up as analogous mate for the human female Linda. Happens.

Flow chart tells us that the poachers will be busted and that Blu will learn to fly when it is most needed (maybe to save his chick’s life?), and that the cockatoo will get his comeuppance and that we’re in for a big embarrassing song and dance number that portends no poaching will ever happen again until the world ends. Happens.

Parrot being so ugly doesn’t help, Eisenberg’s faux Woody Allen stammer is grating, bulldog’s spit is nauseating, and obvious join-the-dots plot is mind-numbing. The under-10s are gonna love this colorful crap.

END

On its merry way to extinction…

Part road movie, part dinosaur actioner, and fully gushing with family values, ICE AGE: DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS is the third and most spectacular in the ICE AGE series – and probably the least interesting.

If you’re not as tired of these characters as I am, you’ll enjoy Manny the Mammoth (Ray Romano), Sid the Sloth (John Leguizamo) and Diego the Sabretooth (Denis Leary) espousing their thinly disguised lectures on how syrupy-sweet it is to be a part of their misfit family. In the original ICE AGE, the family angle was very subtle and touching – but the writers of DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS seem to think we need it said very obviously very many times by as many talking animals as possible. We get it: Family Good, Loneliness Bad.

When Manny and his mammoth “wife” Ellie (Queen Latifah) are expecting, Sid and Diego are psychologically affected: Sid finds dinosaur eggs buried in the ice and pretends to be a mother to them (pretty disturbing stuff if it weren’t for being a cartoon) and Diego decides to pursue his bachelorhood elsewhere.

The dino eggs hatch little tyrannosaurs, whose mother comes looking for them, taking them – and Sid – back to her underground world. (There is one sensational transition: when a crack in the ice dissolves to a cracked eggshell of the same shape.)

Blatantly ripping off Jules Verne’s JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, Manny and friends, in an effort to rescue Sid, track the mother dino down a hole in the ice to find a subterranean world with an artificial sun where dinosaurs still rule the Earth – or at least, the middle part of it.

They meet Buck (Simon Pegg), a crazed, one-eyed weasel who knows how to survive in this wilder world, who leads them through its dinosaurian dangers. His raison d’être is lifelong battle with Rudy, a mysterious dinosaur that the film reveals only in its last scenes for maximum impact – a giant, scientifically-incorrect dinosaur that is a cross between a crocodile and a Spinosaurus.

The animation and creativity is spectacular, and the film is entertaining, but it just doesn’t grab me. Either I’m getting too old, or these animals are. And neither of us is getting any funnier.

And that squirrel Scrat – always an acorn-chaser, never an acorn-eater – is wearing on my nerves. A female Scratte is added to the acorn chase, using her sexual wiles and any other trickery on Scrat to get what she wants – in other words, a typical female.

Waitaminute! This is called “Dawn Of The Dinosaurs” as if dinosaurs arrived after mammals. We sincerely hope the kids watching this cartoon have already learned that dinosaurs were extinct millions of years before large mammals like mammoths evolved. Yes, we hope. We won’t go into the disinformation perpetuated by creationists, fundamentalists, ignoramuses and Republicans.

For every cool detail the animators include – such as velociraptors with shivering feather-spikes or the maternal portrayal of tyrannosaurs – it is tempered by silly aspects like not being allowed to show meat eaters actually eating meat or running down prey. (Blame the characteristically Gutless MPAA.)

No wonder I couldn’t get my teeth into this film.

END